Beware the Bluewash:
The UN Should not Become the

Dustbin for America's Failed Adventures

by
George Monbiot

Dissident Voice

August
28,2003

The
US government's problem is that it has built its foreign policy on two great
myths. The first is that it is irresistible; the second is that as time
advances, life improves. In Iraq it is trapped between the two. To believe that
it can be thwarted, and that its occupation will become harder rather than
easier to sustain as time goes by requires that it disbelieve all that it holds
to be most true.

But
those who oppose its foreign policy appear to have responded with a myth of
equal standing: that what unilateralism cannot solve, multilateralism can. The
United Nations, almost all good liberals now argue, is a more legitimate force
than the US and therefore more likely to succeed in overseeing Iraq's
reconstruction and transition. If the US surrendered to the UN, this would,
moreover, represent the dawning of a fairer, kinder world. These propositions
are scarcely more credible than those emerging from the Pentagon.

The
immediate and evident danger of a transition from US-occupation to
UN-occupation is that the United Nations becomes the dustbin into which the
United States dumps its failed adventures. The American and British troops in
Iraq do not deserve to die any more than the Indian or Turkish soldiers with
whom they might be replaced. But the governments which sent them, rather than
those which opposed the invasion, should be the ones which have to answer to
their people for the consequences. The vicious bombing of the UN headquarters
last week suggests that the jihadis who now seem to be entering Iraq from every
corner of the Muslim world will make little distinction between khaki helmets
and blue ones. Troops sent by India, the great liberal hope, are unlikely to be
received with any greater kindness than western forces. The Indian government
is reviled for its refusal to punish the Hindus who massacred Muslims in
Gujurat. The UN will swiftly discover that occupation-lite is no more viable
than occupation-heavy.

Moreover,
by replacing its troops, the despised United Nations could, in one of the
supreme ironies of our time, provide the US government with the escape route it
may require if George Bush is to win the next election. We can expect him, as
soon as the soldiers have come home, to wash his hands not only of moral
responsibility for the mess he has created, but also of the duty to help pay
for the country's reconstruction. Most importantly, if the UN shows that it is
prepared to mop up after him, it will enhance his incentive to take his
perpetual war to other nations.

It
should also be pretty obvious that, tough as it is for both the American troops
and the Iraqis, pinned down in Iraq may be the safest place for the US army to
be. The Pentagon remains reluctant to fight more than one war at a time. One of
the reasons why it has tackled Iran and North Korea with diplomacy rather than
missiles is that it has neither the soldiers nor the resources to launch an
attack until it can disentangle itself from Iraq.

It
is clear too that the United Nations, honest and brave as many of it staff are,
possesses scarcely more legitimacy as an occupying force than the United
States. The US is now the only nation on the Security Council whose opinion
really counts: its government can ignore other government's vetoes; the other
governments cannot ignore a veto by the United States. In other words, a
handover to the UN cannot take place unless George Bush says so, and Bush will
not say so until it is in his interests to do so. The UN, already tainted in
Iraq by its administration of sanctions and the fact that its first weapons
inspection mission (UNSCOM) was infiltrated by the CIA, (1)
is then reduced to little more than an instrument of US foreign policy.

And
until the UN, controlled by the five permanent members of the Security Council,
has itself been democratised, it is hard to see how it can claim the moral
authority to oversee a transition to democracy anywhere else. This problem is
compounded by the fact that Britain, which is hardly likely to be perceived as
an honest broker, is about to assume the council's presidency. A UN mandate may
be perceived by Iraqis as bluewash, an attempt to grant retrospective
legitimacy to an illegal occupation.

None
of this, of course, is yet on offer anyway. The US government has made it
perfectly clear that the UN may operate in Iraq only as a sub-contractor.
Foreign troops will take their orders from Washington, rather than New York.
America's occupation of Iraq affords it regional domination, control of the
second biggest oilfields on earth and, as the deputy defense secretary, Paul
Wolfowitz has hinted, the opportunity to withdraw its troops from Saudi Arabia
and install them in its new dependency instead. Republican funders have begun feasting
on the lucrative reconstruction contracts, and the Russians and the French,
shut out of the banquet, are being punished for their impudence.

Now
that the US controls the shipping lanes of the Middle East and the oilfields of
central Asia and West Africa, it is in a position, if it so chooses, to turn
off the taps to China, its great economic rival, which is entirely dependant on
external sources of oil. The US appears to be seeking to ensure that when the
Iraqis are eventually permitted to vote, they will be allowed to choose any
party they like, as long as it is pro-American. It will give up its new prize
only when forced to do so by its own voters.

So,
given that nothing we say will make any difference to Bush and his people, we
may as well call for a just settlement, rather than the diluted form of
injustice represented by a UN occupation. This means the swiftest possible
transition to real democracy. Troy Davis of the World Citizen Foundation has
suggested a programme for handing power to the Iraqis which could begin
immediately, with the establishment of a constitutional convention. (2) This would permit the people both to start deciding what
form their own government should take, and to engage in the national
negotiation and reconciliation without which democracy there will be
impossible. From the beginning of the process, in other words, the Iraqi
people, not the Americans, would oversee the transition to democracy.

This
is the logical and just path for the US government to take. As a result, it is
unlikely to be taken. So, one day, when the costs of occupation become
unsustainable, it will be forced to retreat in a manner and at a time not of
its choosing. Iraq may swallow George Bush and his imperial project, just as
the Afghan morass digested the Soviet empire. It is time his opponents stopped
seeking to rescue him from his self-destruction.

George Monbiot is Honorary Professor at
the Department of Politics in Keele and Visiting Professor at the Department of
Environmental Science at the University of East London. He writes a weekly
column for the Guardian newspaper of London. His recently released book, The
Age of Consent (Flamingo Press), puts forthproposals for global democratic governance. His articles and
contact info can be found at his website: www.monbiot.com.